Microsoft proposes a 10-year deal on Call of Duty to Sony

To win the regulatory approval of Activision Blizzard Inc. for $69 billion, Microsoft Corp. offered its rival Sony Group Corp. the right to sell Activision’s famous Call of Duty as part of its gaming subscription service.

has already said that the company has offered Sony a deal for 10 years to make Call of Duty available on the Japanese company’s PlayStation console. As per the familiar with the negotiations, the proposal that Sony did not accept includes rights to sell the title on the PlayStation Plus service which gives gamers access to a catalog of games for a monthly fee.

Xbox Game Pass from Microsoft is a leader in the video game and cloud gaming subscription market and is a top concern of regulators in the US, UK and European Union. Last week, the US Federal Trade Commission said it’s seeking to block the merger on grounds that it would “enable Microsoft to suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business.”

Sony has been a staunch opponent to Microsoft’s bid for Activision, accusing the company of seeking to “lock in many consumers to Xbox” and leveraging its other products to “foreclose cloud gaming at a critical point of its evolution.”

Microsoft’s Game Pass was launched in 2017 and has rapidly grown. It has over 25 million subscribers, far more than Sony’s similar offering. In 2020, Microsoft added cloud gaming to Game Pass. According to the FTC, more than 20 million gamers have streamed games from the cloud with the service.

According to Microsoft, in order to reach its goal of three billion gamers worldwide cloud gaming subscription services are essential and its vision of enabling gamers to play games across Windows, Xbox and smartphones.